NPR is saying this morning that there is more to the Missing Iraqi Guns story than was originally reported.
We have not only managed to destabilize Iraq by pumping hundreds of thousands of guns into the hands of people who shouldn't have them, but new findings show that we are destabilizing other countries as well. It looks like the Kurds are using their share of the missing guns to arm the PKK in Turkey, and four plane loads of guns sent from a US army base in Bosnia simply vanished.
That last bit is particularly important, because it shows that this mess can't entirely be laid at the feet of the Iraqis. They were gone before they even got to Iraq. In this case, we're the ones guilty of the kind of staggering stupidity one normally only associates with... oh, right... the Bush administration or the U.S. military. Point taken.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. It turns out that we chose to ship these guns using a cargo courier company that had a record of violating arms embargoes in Africa (Liberia and... crap, the other one escapes me now) in the 90s. That makes sense. Hand over tens of thousands of guns to a bunch of shady Moldovan gun runners. How could that possibly come back to bite us in the ass?
What's more, these guys didn't even bother filing a fake flight plan to Iraq. Amnesty International checked up on this shipment, and flight controllers in Iraq said that the company doesn't even have any landing slots in Iraq... they're not even authorized to land in Iraq.
I'll add a better link when I can find one. Probably some time after we stop sucking our internet through a bar straw...
In other news, we've launched a new offensive in Iraq. It's unclear at this time whether this is a new new offensive or part of the old new offensive.
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5 comments:
The other country was probably Sierra Leone.
We have a vet of the war training with me at work. I mentioned that my friend Garrett (from Eastern) was there a year, and sees our occupation as hopeless. The guy was trying to explain to me how it was important to be there, and I just kind of ducked out of the conversation. The war has been a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and has almost diametrically opposite effects of those intended. Rather than create a shining example of democracy in the Middle East, it's shown that you can't impose our values on another country and culture. Instead of stabilizing the country and region, it's badly destabilized Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. And of course, regarding the real purpose of the war, securing access to something like 25% of the world's known oil reserves, we've created a chaotic, complex civil war on top of those reserves that will probably go on for a couple of decades.
To quote Captain Kirk, "If anyone thinks of some way we haven't screwed up yet, will you please wake me up?"
"In other news, we've launched a new offensive in Iraq."
Without reading the link from the Beeb to find out the name of it, did they borrow a page from "This Is Spinal Tap" and name it "Operation Break Like The Wind?"
I'd have to listen to the story again to be sure, but I think you're right, Johnny.
I think it's something like Operation Phantom Menace, WP.
"I think it's something like Operation Phantom Menace, WP."
Excellent! You come up with much better titles than the remnants of our millitary over there.
Sadly, it's really Operation Phantom Strike, although Phantom Menace would be oddly appropriate: big box office,lead characters that can't act their way out of a paper bag (Anakin? More like Mannequin!), and lots of plot holes.
Oh, and I didn't buy the chemistry between Blair and Bush either.
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